Richard David Briers CBE was an English actor. His fifty-year career encompassed television, stage, film and radio.

Briers first came to prominence as George Starling in Marriage Lines (1961–66), but it was a decade later, when he narrated Roobarb and Noah and Nelly in… SkylArk (1974–76) and when he played Tom Good in the BBC sitcom The Good Life (1975–78), that he became a household name. Later, he starred as Martin in Ever Decreasing Circles (1984–89), and he had a leading role as Hector in Monarch of the Glen (2000–05). From the late 1980s, with Kenneth Branagh as director, he performed Shakespearean roles in Henry V (1989), Much Ado About Nothing (1993), Hamlet (1996), and As You Like It (2006).

Marc Keller is a French former professional footballer who played primarily as a midfielder. In his club career he played in France, Germany and England. For the national side he played seven times, scoring one goal against Brazil. He later became Director-General of RC Strasbourg and AS Monaco.

Alan Sidney Patrick Rickman was an English actor and director known for playing a variety of roles on stage and on screen. Rickman trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, and was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, performing in modern and classical theatre productions.

His first big television role came in 1982, but his big break was as the Vicomte de Valmont in the stage production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses in 1985, for which he was nominated for a Tony Award. Rickman gained wider notice for his film performances as Hans Gruber in Die Hard (1988) and Severus Snape in the Harry Potter series.

Rickman’s other film roles included the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), for which he received the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Jamie in Truly, Madly, Deeply (1991), Colonel Brandon in Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility (1995), the title character in Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny (1996), which won him a Golden Globe Award, an Emmy Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award, Harry in Love Actually (2003), P.L. O’Hara in An Awfully Big Adventure (1995), Dr. Alfred Blalock in the Emmy-winning HBO film Something the Lord Made (2004), Alexander Dane in Galaxy Quest (1999), and Judge Turpin in the film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s musical of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007).

Rickman died of pancreatic cancer on 14 January 2016 at age 69. His final film roles are as Lieutenant General Frank Benson in the thriller Eye in the Sky (2015), and the voice of Absolem, the caterpillar in Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016).